U.n. Agency Won't Help U.s. Return Refugees

January 13, 1995|By Religion News Service.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has told the Clinton administration the agency will not help the U.S. government in its effort to forcibly return some 4,000 Haitian refugees to their homeland.

"We have disassociated ourselves from the process of screening Haitians at Guantanamo because it does not permit us to fulfill our mandate to protect people under internationally accepted procedures," Rene van Rooyen, the high commissioner's representative to the United States, said in a statement.

On Jan. 5, despite protests from church agencies, including the National Council of Churches, Church World Service and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services, the United States began the repatriation of 4,468 Haitians being held in a "safe haven" at the Guantanamo naval base on Cuba. The Haitians were the last of approximately 20,000 refugees who fled their country last summer after the United States ended its policy of intercepting refugees at sea and forcibly returning them.

When the United States ended the interceptions, the U.N. agency agreed to work as a monitor in the screening process.

But Van Rooyen said that under the forced return process implemented Jan. 5, "UNHCR is unable to carry out its protection mandate effectively in the context of this policy and, therefore, refrains from participating in it."

The United States maintains that because it restored ousted President Jean Bertrand Aristide to power last October, the refugees have no reason to fear returning to Haiti.

U.S. refugee groups dispute that argument.

"It is likely that many of those remaining are still fearful of returning," said Bill Frelick, a policy analyst at the Washington-based, church-supported U.S. Committee for Refugees.

"Fear is a central component of the refugee definition in U.S. and international refugee law, yet the standard being used to evaluate claims of the Haitians on Guantanamo does not take fear into account at all."